


my soul would sing of metamorphoses

by Cinnamonbookworm



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Eichen | Echo House, F/M, Lydia-centric, Set during season 4, Transformation, mentions of canonical main character death, metamorphisis, only vague mentions of stydia, written before season 5 premier
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-07-06
Updated: 2015-07-06
Packaged: 2018-04-08 01:19:58
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,722
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4285251
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Cinnamonbookworm/pseuds/Cinnamonbookworm
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p><i>She stares at the record player in front of her and tries desperately to hear something, anything other than vague whispers  that she can’t make out and that keep her on the very edge of her thoughts – the precipice of something greater than herself. And she shivers at the sound of something, but what that something is she’s not quite sure.</i><br/>An exploration of Lydia Martin and the development of her banshee powers throughout season 4 with spoilers for the season 5 premier. (written before 5x01 aired but still canonically sound for now)</p>
            </blockquote>





	my soul would sing of metamorphoses

**Author's Note:**

> title from metamorphoses by ovid: _my soul would sing of metamorphoses // but since, o gods, you were the source of these // bodies becoming other bodies, breathe // your breath into my book of changes: may // the song I sing be seamless as its way // weaves from the world’s beginning to our day_

It starts at the Lake House.

In that white room, oh-so white until she stains the carpet.

And she doesn’t tell the others, but she’s been there before.  The blank white empty too-silent space. Not the Lake House itself, no, she’s been there so many times before in real life, but the room. The room where she’s been beginning her dreams for years now.

And lately it’s been getting worse.

Because there are voices in her head that she can’t control. A sort of static that reminds her of the record player in the room. Constant and overbearing. A soundtrack to her life.

She stares at the record player in front of her and tries desperately to hear something, anything other than vague whispers  that she can’t make out and that keep her on the very edge of her thoughts – the precipice of something greater than herself. And she shivers at the sound of something, but what that something is she’s not quite sure.

 

***

 

A blank canvas in front of her. White and silent like a room. Malia hovers close by with concerns that make sense but that are barely audible over the voices in her head growing louder.

The were-coyote’s breathing blends in with the sounds of breaths from others. Souls with whispers whose words she cannot even begin to fathom. She closes her eyes, trying to concentrate, trying to make out even a syllable of their diluted conversation until Malia interrupts her.

The pencil makes a meaningless scratch across the paper. And the bubble of white noise and white walls seems to grow even thicker around her. She might be suffocating.

And Meredith’s state of mind is less a vision of impossibility and more of a possible reality.

 

***

 

“I can’t just turn this on.” She tells Malia and tries to explain why what they’ve been trying _isn’t working_. And it’s true that she hasn’t yet figured out how to turn it on, because she _can’t turn it off._ It won’t stop. She _can’t make it stop._ And it’s just getting worse. It’s getting louder and making her thoughts feel foggy and her head hurt.

Her words are coming out of her mouth and she knows them, has thought them a thousand times before.  At the funeral. During that month afterwards that she’d isolated herself, moving further and further away from the pack because _it just wasn’t the same without Allison there._ In Mexico.

The words she’d once screamed in frustration at yet another blank white wall come tumbling out a little harsher than intended towards the other girl. “I just have voices in my head.”

Her statement attracts stares and less-than-kind looks from the other students in the hallway, but she learned long ago how not to care. But the lies she’s been telling herself every time she looks in the mirror have started to have less and less affect, because it’s hard to feel like the queen of everything when a plated armor made of makeup is the only thing keeping her from looking like the corpses she’s been hearing in her dreams when she goes to school.

And she thought saying it would make her feel better, but instead she just feels more tired. A haunting kind of tired that she can feel down in her bones, and the foreboding feeling of dread has wrapped around her heart to block out the pain, because she’s in so much pain. And heartache.

And no one knows. Not even Malia, with her super senses. You’d think a pack of werewolves could sense her pain.

 

***

 

Meredith wants to see her. And she wouldn’t go except it can’t be a coincidence with Malia mentioning her earlier, and really, Lydia wants answers. But she’s forgotten how difficult it can be to get answers from her.

Yes, the phone’s not ringing. But her ears are. Meredith doesn’t seem to have the answers to that, either. And she’s losing patience.

“You called me. I heard you.” And Lydia’s frankly not sure if it was psychic or not. But the number she’s been given is only 4 digits.

The white noise is driving her crazy. It’s only gotten worse with Meredith around, like their combined banshee auras are bouncing electricity off each other, which Lydia knows should be scientifically impossible, but she’s learned to not turn to science for an explanation.

“There has to be more.” She tells Sheriff Stilinksi, and maybe she’s talking about more than just the phone number.

 

***

 

Her head hurts as she stares at the blank white piece of paper with the number on it.

A-I-D-E-N

The next key.

Then her heart hurts too. Another person dead because of her. Another person she couldn’t save. Another reason for her to want to block the world out.

And she can feel her eyes grow wide, can feel that she’s staring again, in that way that makes her vision blur and the space between her eyes seem like a third eye, but instead of seeing the future, she’s lost in the past, the past in which Allison and Aiden were alive and the worst feeling in the world was not nearly as bad as being left alone with her thoughts.

And that’s what she is now – alone with only the sounds of the dead as company.

Parish interrupts her and she jumps, jolted out of the mind that is slowly losing control. She used to have so much control.

 

***

 

Stiles is with her to go talk to Parrish, and he’s standing too close, brushing shoulders. Maybe in another life it might make her heart race, but the sound of her head pounding is louder than the sound of her heart. She can’t think about this – him – now. He’s got a girlfriend anyway.

And they all might die before they finish this semester, so she’s got her priorities in check.

And she’s damaged goods anyway. The girl he was in love with years ago is not the girl who can barely get up in the morning. Not the girl who’s been curled up in the fetus position on the weekends fighting migraines that she knows are supernaturally caused. Not the girl who’s been floating through her life half-conscious because the spirit world has wrapped itself around the ankle of one of her Prada heels and is trying to pull her down into it

Parrish lets them see Meredith.

 

***

 

The walls of Eichen house are white. Meredith’s room is white. The only color other than white is in her hair and the darkness of the windows of the world outside. Her face is pallid and Lydia can practically feel the color drain from her own as she looks at her.

She sits on the bed, sparing a glance at Stiles in exasperation.

“Who doesn’t want you to tell us?”

“The Benefactor.”

And the word makes sense but it doesn’t, because she’d known someone was supplying the assassins with money, but the way Meredith says it makes her gut clench and her throat dry up. The white walls around her feel like a straightjacket.

Meredith’s scream is the first sound to really penetrate her thoughts in a while. And she almost receives enough clarity to get a reaction from Stiles’ thumb on her lip. Almost.

 

***

 

Stiles is a boy made of red string in a world of white plaster. And he’s not trying to break down the walls that have surfaced around her, but he’s there, hovering on the other side, like she’s sleeping and her doesn’t want to wake her. And maybe she is. Because all of this honestly feels like she’s dreaming.

She picks a name, lets her hands hover over the keys and her eyes roll back inside her head and types. Too afraid to know what it is she’s predicting. Curiosity kills the cat, however, or, in this case, the banshee.

Meredith is dead. And it’s all her fault. Another death she couldn’t stop. Another bucket of blood on her hands.

Stiles holds her close but all she can think is that she’s not worthy. She’s a killer. All of this destruction is on her. He should just go back to Malia, whose only blood is a decade old.  He should go back to Scott, who is quite possibly the opposite of her on the spectrum of horrible people. He shouldn’t be here. But he is anyway.

And if he’s next, it’s all her fault.

 

***

 

She’s surrounded by white walls. White walls and a buzzing noise and she can’t help but feel as though she’s been predicting this ever since Allison died. The thought of Eichen house has never been far from her mind, ever since the buzzing started.

She is completely surrounded by thick, white walls, even her mind is locked in a cage made of the cloud-colored plaster, but she’s waiting, she’s calm.

And the voices are loud, filling her cocoon with whispers that she can finally understand. An explanation. A reason. Symptoms, diagnosis, and cure all in one. And, for the first time, when she opens her eyes she can see beyond the bubble of loss and loneliness that she’s buried herself in.

For the first time, she feels confident enough to take a deep breath and plunge headfirst into the spirt world. And what she sees makes the buzzing, ringing sensation grow louder and louder and louder until it’s a siren and a gunshot and the sound of an atomic bomb. It all collides. Into the sound of a banshee’s scream – her scream – and the cocoon shatters. She regains control.

But she’s no longer what she once was. No longer a mental patient. No longer someone who just has voices in her head. No longer a lovesick girl. No longer a girl who deeply cares about what others think of her. The change has been coming for a long time, and finally it has all caught up with her.

The breath she takes is not the suffocating act it once was. Her body feels new; stronger. And she will not let them die. They cannot die. She has to warn them. And now they might listen to her.

Because she is a butterfly and her wings have grown in. And now it’s time to fly.

And she will not let them break her wings, delicate as they may be.


End file.
